The Deutschlandticket was the flagship transport policy of the last government, rolled out in an impressive timescale for a political project; but this speed came with a cost - a system ripe for fraud at an industrial scale. German public transport is famously decentralised, with thousands of individual companies involved in ticketing and operations. Unifying all of these under one national, secure, system has proven a challenge too far for politicians. The end result: losses in the hundreds of millions of Euros, compensated to the transport companies from state and federal budgets to keep the system afloat, and nobody willing to take responsibility. This talk will cover the political, policy, and technical mistakes that lead to this mess; how we can learn from these mistakes; and what we can do to ensure the Deutschlandticket has a viable future.